Heath Mattioli & David Spacone
Feral House
2016
224 pages
I know from Penelopee Spheris' Decline of Western Civilization and Stephen Blush's book American Hardcore that in Los Angeles at least, punks became part of the street gang mix. Disco's Out... Murder's In! is, as far as I know, the first and currently only memoir of an LA punk gang member, recalling the life of Frank the Shank, underboss of LMP, La Mirada Punks. The overall narrative paints a picture of a group of people who weren't great punks, as they didn't contribte anything creative and their constant and extreme violence pretty much drove good people out of the scene, and weren't great gangsters, as they didn't seem to make any money. They mostly seemed to get into fights with the other punk gangs and when they weren't doing that they were killing people for not being punk.
The book is mostly a repetitive story of casual yet extreme violence, with a failed love story twisted into it. The LMP do it all up to murder, and usually they don't have much reason for it except that they thought it was fun, or maybe just because it alleviated boredom. The coldest story in a book of pointless cruelty describes an LMP member named Pineapple Head killing a B-Boy with a homemade bludegeon. Before the final blow, the B-Boy asked, "Why are you doing this?" Anthony Burgess' Alex and the Droogs would have had some poetic response in their nadsat speak, but Pineapple Head's reply was, "because." While participating in such youthful hi-jinks as mindless killing, Frank also fell in love with someone who broke up with him when he confronted her about her maybe cheating... what a surprise. Even in a narrative of his construction he doesn't have proof that she cheated on him but he still goes off on a quick rant about how after 30+ years he hates her and how much he hopes she gets raped. I wonder how she might tell the story of a love so pure with a punk gang bully.
At the end of the story Frank reports that people will tell him that him and his friends ruined the scene, which was probably true, and probably why so often these gangs are a minor detail in narratives about LA Punk if they're mentioned at all. As I was reading this I wondered if any of the killings they discuss were cold cases. When we now look back and see punk as this flare of independent creative energy, who wants to put the spotlight on the participants that cut it all to pieces, literally, with their cheap switchblades? There's some good pictures of LMP and the book cover features a Raymond Pettibon drawing.
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